The Last Samurai
by Helen Dewitt, Ernest Riera Arbussà, Franklin & Siegal Associates INC. · first published 2000
100% recommend
Why HN recommends it
Praised as a brilliant, inspiring novel about a young mother homeschooling a precocious son in London; readers call the writing style striking and say it rewards anyone interested in intellectual life and learning.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
"Ludo, age six, is a prodigy. His mother, Sibylla, raises him alone and tries hard to keep his voracious intellect satisfied, while she struggles to make ends meet. With her exasperated guidance, he teaches himself Greek, so that he can read The Odyssey, before moving on to study Hebrew, Arabic, Inuit, and Japanese. And both Sibylla and Ludo share a passion for Kurosawa's Seven Samurai, which they watch repeatedly, absorbing its lessons of samurai virtue. Soon Ludo embarks on a quest to find his father, and approaches seven men to test their mettle. Each of them - prominent, powerful, or flaw
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One of my favorite books is The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt, and one of my favorite quotes from it is: The secret of success is to complete a single simple task on a daily basis. It really is about making slow, meaningful progress. No one wakes…
on “Dance in a Year” ↗…Charles Taylor - The Art of the Islamic Garden by Emma Clark - Notes on Culture by T. S. Eliot - In Praise of Shadows by Tanizaki - The Qur'an: Oxford World Classics - On Bohemia by Graña - The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt - The Individual and His Property by Stirner
on “U.S. eyes building nuclear power plants on the moon, Mars” ↗…Beckett as an understudy) and this state of affairs is too complacent. You should be hard at work on overcoming your inner Joyce. P.S. If you haven't, you ought to pick up and read Helen DeWitt's _The Last Samurai_, as soon as possible.
on “Ask HN: How do you consume Hacker News?” ↗It's hard to name only two. I'll choose two that deserve to be more famous than they are, in my opinion. Helen DeWitt's _The Last Samurai_ (no relation to the Tom Cruise movie) is the best novel I've read in years, a brilliant tale of an absurdly precocious childhood, with several more rich tales of their own value nested inside. Anyone…
on “Ask HN: Please name two of your most favorite books.” ↗Not exactly curriculum, but I really, really, really recommend the (fictional) book "The Last Samurai" by Helen DeWitt. It's about a young mother homeschooling her prodigy son, and is set in London. Easily one of the most inspiring books I've ever read. http://www.amazon.com/LAST-SAMURAI-Helen-Witt/dp/B0014JOL1A/...
on “Ask HN: Homeschooling Resources?” ↗+1 on the Ancillary trilogy. Will check out the rest of your list. Another one I really liked: The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. Very interesting writing style (it's not about Japan).
on “Summer Reading List” ↗The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt. I read a lot of fiction (30+ novels a year) and this book really blew me away. Oh and by the way, it's not about Samurai or Japan or anything like that. If you're interested in thinking…
on “Ask HN: Favorite fiction books of 2018?” ↗Reminds me of an excerpt from one of my favorite novels, The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt: ...though I believe the [Rosetta] Stone was originally a rather pompous thing to erect, it was a gift to posterity. Being written in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek, it only required…
on “A trashed Italian manuscript got sewn into a sweet silk purse” ↗…Limitless, [0] as limited as its plot is. There is something motivational about it, which is probably why there are so many YouTube productivity videos with the soundtrack. [1] I get the same feeling from The Last Samurai a book (unrelated to the Tom Cruise movie) by Helen DeWitt, which is about raising a genius child. I don't know what the psychological effect is called, but there does seem to be something significant…
on “Flowers for Algernon (1965) [pdf]” ↗I'm looking for inspiration for the Christmas holidays. Mine were: – Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai (2000) – William Cronon, Nature's Metropolis (1991) – John Ma, Polis (2024) – John Julius Norwich, A History of Venice (1982) (Apologies if someone has posted something similar recently. I did a quick…
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?” ↗Helen DeWitt wrote another novel after The Last Samurai, Lightning Rods. It's a very different book, but definitely worth a try! Good luck!
on “Ask HN: What were the best books you read this year?” ↗My recommendation for parenting book is The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt
on “Ask HN: Best books read in 2022” ↗…to find bigger and better things, and it's lowbrow in that you can find those things almost anywhere, even in unconventional places. tl;dr: I agree with you completely. :-) (I've never heard of The Last Samurai; placed an order at your recommendation.)
on “Ask HN: How do you consume Hacker News?” ↗Reminds me of a section in The Last Samurai by Helen DeWitt: I said What I mean is, though I believe the [Rosetta] Stone was originally a rather pompous thing to erect, it was a gift to posterity. Being written in hieroglyphics, demotic and Greek,…
on “Fragment of lost 12th-century epic poem found in another book’s binding” ↗